


The Worst Part (is Over)

by bgharison



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: 5.07 coda, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Off-screen and not graphic but discussed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-22
Updated: 2019-03-22
Packaged: 2019-11-27 23:31:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18200477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bgharison/pseuds/bgharison
Summary: Danny thinks that finding Steve looking terrifyingly dead on the stinking, damp floor of the laundry is going to be the worst part.He’s wrong.





	The Worst Part (is Over)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aries_taurus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aries_taurus/gifts).



> Okay, so this came from a [tumblr exchage](http://ariestaurus21.tumblr.com/post/182790280404/thekristen999-bgharison-cowandcalf) in which aries_taurus said “OMG the sudden noncon ideas in my head i cannot explore” and I thought, well, since you don’t have time to explore them, I’ll do it as a GIFT. A somewhat disturbing, probably-inappropriate-now-that-I-think about it gift but, um . . . here. Happy Birthday! (::shoves the gift at you and hides, wondering why I couldn't just be content with the found family fluff that was originally planned::)
> 
> I did not select the archive warning for Rape/Non-Con because it didn't feel entirely appropriate or warranted, but please mind the tags and note there's a definite element of non-con in this narrative, even though it's off-screen, and mostly discussed in euphemism and hedged language (just like we do in real life, for better or worse). It's a h/c fic, heavy on the c, but if you're a reader concerned about triggers, please don't carry on at the risk of upsetting yourself.

* * *

 

Danny thinks that finding Steve looking terrifyingly dead on the stinking, damp floor of the laundry is going to be the worst part.

He’s wrong.

First, there’s the initial relief of finding a pulse, of seeing Steve’s chest rise and fall, albeit unsteadily.  That relief quickly gives way to his heart falling like a stone to the pit of his stomach.

_“Where’s my dad?  I want to see my dad.”_

Then, he’s in the back of an ambulance, sirens wailing, suspension lurching and leaping over the potholes on the way to Tripler -- Tripler, not Queens, because Tripler is better equipped to deal with _this level of trauma_ , according to the wide-eyed paramedic who’d exchanged a significant glance with her partner after seeing the IV bags clutched in Grover’s huge hand -- and Steve’s fucking heart just won’t keep beating.

Danny’s heart stops twice, right along with Steve’s.  By the time they reach Tripler, Steve’s heart keeps going of its own accord and Danny’s has settled for pounding uncomfortably.  He thinks, okay, surely the worst is over now.

He’s _still_ wrong.

Danny goes right with Steve into the trauma room, and no one questions or argues.  Might have something to do with the death grip that Steve has on Danny’s wrist. They cut Steve’s pants and boxer briefs away from his body; dank, soaked from the water that covered the floor, streaked with blood.  Danny assumes there will be three blood types found when they process them back in the lab.

“You want to bag these, Detective?” the nurse asks quietly.  She’s a tiny wisp of a thing, young, but she’s already had Five-O in her care enough times to know.  Danny starts to nod.

“No,” Steve snaps.  “Burn them.”

“Steve --” Danny starts.

“I said no,” Steve says.  His eyes are wild, pupils still blown, his hand tightening around Danny’s forearm.

Danny shakes his head at the nurse. The offending garments disappear and a sheet is draped over Steve’s lower body.  Danny wraps his hand around Steve’s.

“Okay, okay,” he soothes.  The pressure eases and Steve closes his eyes, swallows convulsively.

Steve tolerates the doctor’s cursory exam by gritting his teeth so hard Danny’s sure he’s going to crack a molar.  The diagnosis is exactly as expected: broken ribs, concussion, irregular heart rate courtesy of electric shock, and then, of course, there’s the cocktail of drugs coursing through his system, wreaking havoc doing god-knows-what.

“We’ll start IV fluids for the obvious dehydration, but until we get the lab results back from both his blood tests and the identification of the drugs . . .” the doctor trails off with an apologetic shrug.  

“You can’t do much for him,” Danny fills in.  Steve is positively _twitching_ in an effort to hold himself together, hands clenching and unclenching, his long, battered fingers tangling in the thin sheet.

“We’ll rush the results, and we’ll do as much as we can in the meantime to make him comfortable,” the doctor says.  A quick squeeze to Danny’s shoulder, and he’s off, lab coat flapping behind him.

The nurse is pulling together an IV kit, plucking handfuls of gauze and a bottle of rubbing alcohol from the cabinet.  She piles the supplies on a tray and wheels it to the gurney. Danny notices that she stays in Steve’s line of vision -- _this is a clever one_ , he thinks to himself, _competent_.  

“Commander, I’m going to start an IV,” she says.  Her voice is low and steady, her fingers feather-light, and she touches him gently on the collarbone, one of the few places not visibly damaged, to get his attention.

All hell breaks loose.

“Don’t touch me!” Steve cries, his voice as broken as when he’d asked for his father.  The tray clatters to the floor, gauze packets scattering around their feet, as the whole lot is upturned with a cobra-fast movement of his hands.  The nurse startles and steps back quickly, but Steve’s not striking out at her.

His hands are raised in defense, and he’s flinching away, folding in on himself.  Danny’s never seen Steve do that, not once, but he’s seen it before. He’s seen it too many damn times not to recognize it instantly.

 _Now this_ , Danny thinks, _this is the worst part._

* * *

The hours bleed into the next day, a blur of furious text messages with the team, conversations with the doctors about electrolytes, the threat of pneumonia, beta blockers . . . Danny has to look for the am/pm indicator on his phone because honestly, he’s lost track.  

Steve alternates between fever or drug induced brushes with alternate reality and periods of dubious lucidity.  Danny waits until a rare moment of privacy intersects with Steve being alert enough to ask for water.

“Steve,” he says, holding the cup when Steve’s shaking hands won’t cooperate, “buddy, do we need to get them to do a kit, get you . . . checked out?”

Steve’s processing ability is slowed by exhaustion and drugs, and Danny’s cautious use of euphemism, but he catches on.  

“No!  God . . . no, Danny.”

Relief floods through Danny.  Still. “You’re sure?” he murmurs.  Because _something_ happened, of that much he is certain.

Steve takes another sip of water and studies the weave of the blanket.

“It wasn’t . . . “ he starts, then shakes his head.  “How’d you --”

Danny fills in the blanks, like he’s been doing -- like _they’ve_ been doing -- since day one.

“Not my first rodeo,” he said.  Then he realizes, Steve’s not a cop, he’s not been through all the classes, he has no idea that he’s a walking textbook case.  “The, ah, the way you reacted to the nurse, earlier.”

Steve lets that filter through the drugs.  “I’m sorry,” he says, dropping his head.

“You’re -- no.  No, you don’t apologize . . . not for anything.”  Danny feels anger, white hot and righteous, filling him from that place deep inside that makes it impossible for him to be anything other than a cop.  “Whatever WoFat did --”

“It wasn’t him, it was her,” Steve blurts out, cutting him off.  He glances down in disgust at the puncture marks on his arms, still clearly visible amid the livid bruising.  Steve had been cognizant enough to tell the doctors that the woman had used large bore IVs, to maximize the delivery of the drugs.  The drugs that might yet be in Steve’s system, and Danny feels a fleeting pang of uncertainty, that Steve might not be sharing of his own free will.  But he’ll be damned if he’ll let Steve shove this away in that stupid metaphorical box, no matter what they taught him in SEAL school. So he just nods in encouragement, waiting.

“She . . . it started with setting up the IVs and then she just kept . . . touching me.  I couldn’t -- the drugs, and it took me forever to get out of the restraints, I couldn’t --”

“I _know_ , Steve.  I know.”

“I don’t remember everything, Danny.”

“It’s okay.  You don’t need to, it’s . . . it’s okay.”  It’s not, of course, that’s a stupid thing to say, and he knows it.  “It’s _gonna_ be okay.”

Steve’s face crumples a little, like it had on the floor of that basement, and Danny does what comes most naturally to him, then and now:  he wraps his hand around the back of Steve’s neck and tries to lend him a bit of strength. This is uncharted territory, and he’s at a loss, but it seems to help.  Steve’s nodding.

“Yeah.  Yeah, Danny.”

* * *

They’re finally home.  Steve’s eyes are still glassy, even after the longest shower Danny’s ever heard him take, and his gaze flits wildly around the house, landing and skidding away from the places once covered in his father’s blood.  Danny’s not surprised when Steve limps painfully toward the back door, pushes through it and heads to the chairs. He grabs a beer for himself, a water for Steve, and follows.

“It seemed so real,” Steve says quietly.  They’ve been sitting in the chairs for a few moments, watching the sun set.  “Me and my dad, sitting here. Talking.”

“It would have been, I think, if he hadn’t been murdered.  You know? You would have had that moment, eventually.”

“I pictured . . . everyone, happy.  It was . . . it was all just -- hallucination.  That’s all it was.”

Steve goes so quiet that Danny thinks maybe he’s drifted off.

“Maybe I just imagined it.”

It takes Danny a minute to follow.  Steve’s looking at him, hopeful, like he’s wanting Danny to confirm something.  And _shit_ , why is this is life, why does he have to be the one to tell Steve that no, his father is dead and yes, some evil bitch took advantage of him at his most vulnerable.  He doesn’t have to say anything, as it turns out, because Steve can apparently read it in his face.

“It doesn’t matter, anyway,” Steve says.  “Nothing really -- it’s not like anything really _happened_.”

“It does matter.  Whatever it was, it matters.”

“I wouldn’t -- I wouldn’t back down.  With WoFat. I was angry. Wouldn’t give him anything, wouldn’t . . . I dunno.”

“Submit?”

Steve barks out a harsh laugh that turns into a wracking cough. Danny thinks about pneumonia.

“Yeah.  So he . . . I think, he let her touch me, have her fun  . . . he laughed. I think I remember him laughing.”

“Sick bastard,” Danny mutters.  He’d like to revive WoFat and kill him again, slowly.

“I didn’t want to kill him,” Steve says.  “There’s still too many questions . . . I didn’t want to kill him.  But her . . . I wanted to kill her.” He says it softly, like a confession.

“I’m glad you killed her.”

Steve looks at Danny in surprise.  It’s out of character, Danny knows it.  But his rage is still white-hot, and he can’t find any sympathy, any reason to wish that the usual laws of civilization had applied, that she was in a cell somewhere, instead of the morgue.

And Steve nods again, like he feels absolved, somehow, and then Danny can see him pull his resolve around him like a shield.

“I’m tired, I think . . . think I’ll try to sleep,” Steve says, standing stiffly, hunched a bit over his ribs.

“I’m taking the sofa,” Danny says, leaving Steve no room to argue.  

He has a feeling it might be another long night.

* * *

He hears a soft thump, waking him instantly, and tracks Steve’s footsteps across the short space from his bed to the bathroom.  Normally, even wide awake, he hears nothing until the flush of the toilet and running water; it speaks volumes to Steve’s state of both mind and body that he’s not quiet, guarded.  The sense of being trusted leaves a bittersweet warmth in Danny’s heart. Then he’s launching from the sofa and taking the stairs by storm when he hears the sound of retching and a weak moan.  

He calls out quietly as he steps into Steve’s bedroom.  “Steve?”

Steve tries to reply but there’s more retching.  Danny finds him hunched over the toilet, one arm wrapped around his ribs, one clinging to the porcelain.  He wets a washcloth, dabs over Steve’s mouth while he rests a hand carefully between his shoulder blades. Steve flinches and Danny moves his hand up to rest on the back of his head.

“It’s me, Steve, it’s okay.  I’ve got you.”

Steve groans and collapses back onto the floor, leaning against the wall.  Danny’s thankful for the small, outdated bathroom floor plan and it’s plethora of solid surfaces to support the weight of a recently tortured SEAL.  He swipes at Steve’s mouth again, cleaning away a few strands of spit and bile, then grabs a clean cloth and wets it with hot water. Steve closes his eyes and lets Danny wash his face.

Danny makes himself as comfortable as he can next to Steve, on the cold bathroom floor, and waits.  

“I woke up in the white room with . . . my pants were unzipped, and . . . sticky,” Steve says.  His eyes are still closed. “I can’t -- how?”

“Biology,” Danny says.  “You can’t help it, it’s . . . it’s just the way it works, you know that.”

“I should have --”

“No.  No, there’s nothing you should have done, or could have done.  Do you remember . . . “

Steve nods, blows out a harsh breath.  “She stood behind me. WoFat -- I guess I should be thankful, she didn’t want to block his view.”

“No.”  Danny says it forcefully enough that Steve startles.  He carefully puts a hand on Steve’s knee, in apology, relieved when Steve doesn’t shy away.  “No. There is no part of this that you should be thankful for.”

“It could have been worse.”

Danny’s seen this before, he knows this narrative.  “And I’m glad that it wasn’t, and I know you have a good sense of perspective, but that’s not the point.  You do not have to qualify the god-awful thing that happened by being glad it wasn’t worse.”

“I’m just saying, other people have --”

“Other people have their been through their own shit, it doesn’t change yours.”

Steve is quiet for a long moment.  “Of all the . . . of everything, the waterboarding, the damn cattle prod, the  . . . I feel like I’m making a big deal out of nothing. It’s stupid, that I can’t -- it’s not that big of a deal.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.  I think . . . maybe of all of it, the worst, the _worst_ part was that’s where you felt the most . . .”  Danny trails off with a sigh. He can speculate but he knows he can’t really understand.

“Helpless.”   Steve takes a shuddering breath.  “Weak.”

“No, never,” Danny says.  “Drugged. Restrained. At that moment, they had the upper hand, the power, the control.  At _that moment_.  Until you found your opening, and took it back.”

Steve turns his head, looks at him.  Thinks over what Danny just said and finds it true.

“Thanks, Danno,” he whispers.

“Can we get off the floor?”

* * *

By the weekend, Steve’s feeling well enough that he’s driving Danny crazy, and definitely not well enough to go back into work.  They compromise by having what they let Steve call a team debriefing, but what they all know is really a chance to regroup, to have each other close, to breathe a collective sigh of relief that _they got Steve back_ , and that WoFat is dead.

Kono catches Danny in the kitchen, washing dishes.  Steve is outside, flanked by Chin and Grover, swapping stories and enjoying the fresh air.  He still doesn’t like being inside much, these days.

“How bad was it?” Kono asks.  She slides in next to Danny, taking a soapy dish from his hand and rinsing it.

“He’s still on beta blockers, there’s still a lot of crap in his lungs, but --”

“No.  How _bad_ , Danny?”

Danny blinks at her.  The rookie is good, has always been good, but how’d she get _this_ good?

She sighs.  “When I was seventeen, I called Chin to come get me away from a date that went . . . badly.  You look at Steve like Chin looked at me, then.”

“How’s that?”

“Like you want to wrap him in bubble wrap, like you’re furious with the world in general, like you’re worried about him.”

“He was tortured.  Water-boarded.”

“That’s happened before, remember?  And there’s also . . . he shook my _hand_ , Danny.  When I got here today.  Steve doesn’t shake hands, he’s a hugger.  He’s like a big octopus and his hugs are the best, like, you’re just being engulfed and . . . he shook my hand.”

Danny sighs.  “It wasn’t WoFat.  He’s okay physically.  That’s all I feel comfortable sharing, and I don’t think he’s going to want to talk about it, Kono.”

“You made sure he understood it wasn’t his fault?”

“Yes.”

“That it doesn’t mean he was _weak_?” She spits out the word.  Danny’s heart breaks for her a little bit, too.

“Absolutely.”

“Okay.”  She pauses.  “Should I try hugging him, you think?”

“You should definitely try hugging him,” Danny laughs.  

They see Steve come onto the lanai and start fussing over the grill. Kono wordlessly reaches for the tray of steaks and Danny hands them over with a nod. He watches as she plops the tray down on the table next to Steve, and reaches for him, carefully.  Steve looks confused, at first, but Danny can see the moment he realizes what’s happening, and relaxes into Kono’s hug. He sees Steve hook his chin over her shoulder, his big hands coming up to press gently against her back and cradle her head against him.  Danny can only see the back of Kono’s head, but she must be murmuring something, because Steve closes his eyes and nods. He presses a kiss to her temple. Chin and Grover wander up, the promise of ribeyes enticing them away from the water, and Danny stands there for a moment, soaking it in -- the sight of Steve, as he should be, battered but far from broken, surrounded by his ohana.

Steve glances in the window, catches Danny staring.

 _Thank you_ , he mouths, and Danny’s not sure what Steve is thanking him for, because he’s not at all sure that he’s said or done the right things . . . only that he’s tried, and that he’ll keep trying, because God knows despite this picture-perfect moment, there’s going to be a lot of shit falling out from this for a while.  But for now, for this moment, there’s peace, and he’ll take it.

And he’ll hope, and believe, that the worst part is over.


End file.
